This is my father, Mendel Kalmyk. He was born in 1897 in the Vilno region. He died in 1943 in Gorky to where he had been evacuated. My father’s father and grandfather taught Jewish children in the cheder.

My mum Sofiya Balonova was born in 1895 in the Vilno region, too. She died of cancer in 1946 in Leningrad.